Quotes about definition (1773 quotes, page 5)

“I do not believe that art must develop on national lines, but I am convinced that there never was and never will be an international art. There is and was French, German, Italian, and Flemish art. But I deny those specific definitions so fashionable with adepts of fascism which make of every country an hermetic cell from which all foreign artists are excluded. [shortly after the end of the German occupation]”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

quote, New York, early 1944; as cited in: Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 430
1940 - 1960

Art , Fashion , Country

“Some poets are more deeply involved than others in the raw experience which lies behind the poem and for them the act of composition is an act of self exploration with the definite goal of enlightenment rather than the ideally depersonalized construction of a beautiful and autonomous object.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Not Without Glory, 1976

Beauty

“To think is to run after insecurity, to be demoralized for grandiose trifles, to immure oneself in abstractions with a martyr's avidity, to hunt up complications the way others pursue collapse or gain. The thinker is by definition keen for torment.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Way , Thinking

“I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that inevitably will be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)

“Her point of view about student work was that of a social worker teaching finger-painting to children or the insane.
I was impressed with how common such an attitude was at Benton: the faculty—insofar as they were real Benton faculty, and not just nomadic barbarians—reasoned with the students, “appreciated their point of view”, used Socratic methods on them, made allowances for them, kept looking into the oven to see if they were done; but there was one allowance they never under any circumstances made—that the students might be right about something, and they wrong. Education, to them, was a psychiatric process: the sign under which they conquered had embroidered at the bottom, in small letters, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?—and half of them gave it its Babu paraphrase of Can you wait upon a lunatic? One expected them to refer to former students as psychonanalysts do: “Oh, she’s an old analysand of mine.” They felt that the mind was a delicate plant which, carefully nurtured, judiciously left alone, must inevitably adopt for itself even the slightest of their own beliefs.
One Benton student, a girl noted for her beadth of reading and absence of coöperation, described things in a queer, exaggerated, plausible way. According to her, a professor at an ordinary school tells you “what’s so”, you admit that it is on examination, and what you really believe or come to believe has “that obscurity which is the privilege of young things”. But at Benton, where education was as democratic as in “that book about America by that French writer—de, de—you know the one I mean”; she meant de Tocqueville; there at Benton they wanted you really to believe everything they did, especially if they hadn’t told you what it was. You gave them the facts, the opinions of authorities, what you hoped was their own opinion; but they replied, “That’s not the point. What do you yourself really believe?” If it wasn’t what your professors believed, you and they could go on searching for your real belief forever—unless you stumbled at last upon that primal scene which is, by definition, at the root of anything….
When she said primal scene there was so much youth and knowledge in her face, so much of our first joy in created things, that I could not think of Benton for thinking of life. I suppose she was right: it is as hard to satisfy our elders’ demands of Independence as of Dependence. Harder: how much more complicated and indefinite a rationalization the first usually is!—and in both cases, it is their demands that must be satisfied, not our own. The faculty of Benton had for their students great expectations, and the students shook, sometimes gave, beneath the weight of them. If the intellectual demands were not so great as they might have been, the emotional demands made up for it. Many a girl, about to deliver to one of her teachers a final report on a year’s not-quite-completed project, had wanted to cry out like a child, “Whip me, whip me, Mother, just don’t be Reasonable!””

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 3, pp. 81–83

Life , Children , Books , Youth

“There is a distinct reluctance, almost an unwillingness, on the part of Torah to grant man the privilege to consume meat. Man as an animal-eater is looked at askance by the Torah. There are definitive vegetarian tendencies in the Bible.”

Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993) American theologian

Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Emergence of Ethical Man https://books.google.it/books?id=rIhh_Rx7utwC&pg=PA0, p. 31 (2005)

Animals , Parting

“The writer is a definite human phenomenon. He is almost a type – as pugilists are a type. He may be a bad writer – an insipid one or a clumsy one – but there is a bug in him that keeps spinning yarns; and that bulges his brow a bit, narrows his jaws, weakens his eyes and gives him girl children instead of boys. Nobody but a writer can write. People who hang around writers for years – as producers did – who are much smarter and have much better taste, never learn to write.”

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

from "Elegy for Wonderland", by Ben Hecht, Esquire Magazine, March 1959

Children , People , Girl , Boy

“But the Progressive Conservative is very definitely liberal Republican. These are people who are moderately conservative on economic matters, and in the past have been moderately liberal, even sometimes quite liberal on social policy matters.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

1990s, Speech to the Council for National Policy (1997)

People , Past

“.. No academy could have given me all I discovered by getting my teeth into the exhibitions, the shop windows, and the museums of Paris. Beginning with the market – where, for lack of money, I bought only a piece of a long cucumber – the workman in his blue overall, the most ardent followers of Cubism, everything showed a definite feeling for proportion, clarity, an accurate sense of form, of a more painterly kind of painting, even in the canvases of second-rate artists.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 29
1920's, My life (1922)

Money , Feeling , Sense , Painting

“There has definitely been a significant bias from the local media like nothing like I have ever experienced, but I intend to have the last laugh when I win tomorrow.”

Karen Handel (1962) American politician

Karen Handel: ‘I Intend to Have the Last Laugh When I Win’ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/19/exclusive-karen-handel-intend-last-laugh-win/ (June 19, 2017)

“The main thing, if there is a power that the media has, it’s mostly because they represent the public in quite a direct relationship. They’re very populist in the sense that they are meant to be the public’s hired goons who go out, find information, collate it all, verify whether or not it’s true, and then signpost to the citizens that this is worth reading. And they make it in such a way that it’s interesting to read. So they are kind of spokespeople for the people. And in an interconnected age, they are definitely quicker to realize the way power has shifted. You find most journalists now are on all these social networks. They’re all about creating… they want a direct relationship with their audience, in a way that politicians have been very loathe to do.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, Chatham House Talk (September 28, 2011)

People , Age , Way , Sense

“For historians of the left even to raise the question of affinities between Soviet Communism and ‘Fascism’ is tantamount to conceding the possibility of a causal relationship. Since ‘Fascism’ for them is by definition the antithesis of socialism and Communism, no such affinities can be admitted and the sources of ‘Fascism’ must be sought exclusively in conservative ideas and capitalist practices. In the Soviet Union this trend went so far the under Lenin, Stalin and their immediate successor, it was forbidden to use the term “National Socialist.””

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 241

Communication , Idea , Question

“You should be able to do things that you wouldn't do. That's the definition of a genuinely moral person. They could do it, but they don't.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast #36 [@2:32:37]
Podcast

Personality

“The "imagination that shudders at the Hell of Dante," is not that the same faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own? No one but Shakspeare can embody, out of Saxo Grammaticus, the story of Hamlet as Shakspeare did: but every one models some kind of story out of it; every one embodies it better or worse. We need not spend time in defining. Where there is no specific difference, as between round and square, all definition must be more or less arbitrary. A man that has so much more of the poetic element developed in him as to have become noticeable, will be called Poet by his neighbors.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Imagination , Hell , Time

“Ask yourself for a moment what is really important to you—not by anyone else's definition but your own.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Seattle, Washington (1994) as reported in Maharaji, Visions International (1998)
1990s

“The definition of throwing your vote away is to go into that voting booth and vote for one of two parties that will not change the direction this country's going in.”

Bob Barr (1948) Republican and Libertarian politician

Concord Monitor, (22 July 2008) Libertarian appeals to decisive voters http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080723/FRONTPAGE/807230305, Concord Monitor, 22 July 2008.
2000s, 2008

Change , Country

“Physics seems to have done reasonably well in studying electrons, although there is not to this day a precise definition of this term.”

Stephen Kosslyn (1948) American psychologist

Source: Image and Mind. 1980, p. 470

Study

“Although as a sailor I despised politics - for I loved my sailor's life and still love it today - conditions forced me to take up a definite attitude towards political problems.”

Fritz Sauckel (1894–1946) German general

Quoted in "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal" - Nuremberg, Germany - 1948.

Love , Life , Problem

“If "socialism" is defined as "ownership of the means of production"--and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition--then the United States is the first truly Socialist country.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

The Pension Fund Revolution (1976)
1960s - 1980s

Country

“The Senate version of the 2015 National Budget will define savings in FULL COMPLIANCE WITH THE SUPREME COURT DECISION on the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). Our committee accepted all of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago's points and took note of her concerns. I believe Senator Santiago based her speech on the NEP version, NOT the one the Senate has amended. However, the Senate version is never going to adopt the version of the NEP as regard to their definition of savings.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, November 26). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152871070040610/
2014, Facebook

Decision

“A piece of knowledge about boat-building, about whose correctness Crusoe has no doubts at all, will not be seen as a hunch and will be valued according to Menger's Law. It may be said that Crusoe is well aware that he possesses this kind of information; he will deploy and value it in the same way as he may be imagined to deploy and value other resources he believes are definitely at his disposal. But concerning Crusoe's hunches and his visions in the face of a changing, uncertain environment, it cannot be said at all that Crusoe knows he has a hunch or a vision of the future. He does not act by deliberately utilizing his hunch about the future; instead, he finds that his actions reflect his hunches…In other words, it turns out, the essence of entrepreneurial vision, and what sets it apart from knowledge as a resource, is reflected in Crusoe's lack of self-consciousness concerning it…Crusoe may…gradually come to be aware of his vision. When he does, that vision ceases to be entrepreneurial and comes to be a resource. Moreover, Crusoe's realization that he possesses this definite information resource may itself be entrepreneurial. As soon as he 'knows' that he possesses an item of knowledge, that item ceases to correspond to entrepreneurial vision; instead, as with all resources, it is Crusoe's belief that he has the resources at his disposal that may now constitute his entrepreneurial hunch.”

Israel Kirzner (1930) American economist

Israel Kirzner, (1979: 168-169); as cited in: " Israel Kirzner's Entrepreneurship http://www.constitution.org/pd/gunning/subjecti/workpape/kirz_ent.pdf" by the Constitution Society, May 31, 2004

Law , Way , Imagination , Knowledge

“Courage is an animating spirit of masculinity, and it is crucial to any meaningful definition of masculinity. Courage and strength are synergetic virtues. An overabundance of one is worth less without and adequate amount of the other.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 41
The Way of Men (2012)

Courage , Animals

“One definition of success might be refining our appetites, while deepening our hunger.”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

"Where Epics Fail: Aphorisms on Art, Morality & Spirit" (2018)

Hunger , Success

“Ask yourself for a moment what is really important to you_not by anyone else's definition, but your own. Peel away all the roles that you act out every day, and you will find a being. A being that, amazingly enough, cannot be put in a box. A being that isn't good or bad—just a being. A being that wants to exist, that wants to learn, that wants to appreciate. A being that just wants to be.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Seattle Washington, February 1994
1990s

Learning , Box

“To conclude: there are two well-known minor ways in which language has mattered to philosophy. On the one hand there is a belief that if only we produce good definitions, often marking out different senses of words that are confused in common speech, we will avoid the conceptual traps that ensnared our forefathers. On the other hand is a belief that if only we attend sufficiently closely to our mother tongue and make explicit the distinctions there implicit, we shall avoid the conceptual traps. One or the other of these curiously contrary beliefs may nowadays be most often thought of as an answer to the question Why does language matter to philosophy? Neither seems to me enough.”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Ian Hacking (1975), Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy?, p. 7.

Way , Question , Sense

“Apparently an "art"—which almost by definition cannot be put into words—is probably best communicated by approaching it from many sides and doing so repeatedly, hoping thereby students will finally master enough of the art, or if you wish, style, to significantly increase their future contributions to society.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Hope , Art , Communication , Future

“First let us ask whether our wealth-creating agencies, particular that of industry, are to be based upon private enterprise of policy management. I can not see how any intelligent observer can have any possible faith in the capacity of political management to provide either stability or progress if it should set out to operate the agencies of wealth creation, particularly industry. It is my firm conviction that any form of 'Government Regulation of Business' is bound to result in an ever-increasing interference with the broad exercise of initiative - the very foundation of the American system. That is the natural evolution of bureaucracy. If that be so, might not the ultimate logical result be the necessity for the socialization of industry through the break down of the profit system induced by the accumulative effect of the ever-increasing political management. We do not need to go far afield to see definite evidences of that possibility”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

as cited in: Thurman Arnold (2000, 72-73).
New York Times interview, 1935

Faith , Exercises , Intelligence , Business

“Immoral (definition): Obsolete expression meaning "politically incorrect."”

Richard Summerbell (1956) Canadian mycologist

Abnormally Happy: A Gay Dictionary (1985)

“I want to move forward, I don't want to move back. And I don't want to hurt the Clintons. I really don't. She went through a lot. And suffered greatly in many different ways. And I am not looking to hurt them at all. The campaign was vicious. They say it was the most vicious primary and the most vicious campaign. I guess, added together, it was definitely the most vicious; probably, I assume you sold a lot of newspapers. … It's just not something that I feel very strongly about. … I'm not looking to look back and go through this. This was a very painful period. This was a very painful election with all of the email things and all of the foundation things and all of the everything that they went through and the whole country went through. This was a very painful period of time.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

About not prosecuting Hillary Clinton.
2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

Pain , Way , Feeling , Suffering

“You have Mel Brooks and your Marx Brothers and your Larry David. So it's affected it enormously and really not at all. I don't think I've ever done anything comedically where the joke of it had to do with Judaism and Jewishness, but there's definitely a proud tradition of comedy in the Jews.”

Andy Samberg (1978) American comedian

Quoted in Monica Kim, "Andy Samberg on SNL, his hair and other things not in a box," http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/2008/04/9035/andy-samberg-on-snl-his-hair-and-other-things-not-in-a-box/ NorthbyNorthwestern.com (April 16, 2008).

Thinking

“[Theophile] Gautier's article is very good. I begin to feel a little more contented. His remarks about my thick colours are also very just. The critics who see and judge my pictures are not forced to know that in painting them I am not guided by a definite intention, although I do my utmost to try and attain the aim which I have in sight, independently of methods. People are not even obliged to know why it is that I work in this way, with all its faults.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote of Millet in his letter of 23 March 1851; as quoted by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 112
the most famous painting of Millet 'The Sower', reviewed in an article then by Gautier, was exhibited for the first time in 'The Salon' of Paris, at the End of 1850
1851 - 1870

People , Way , Feeling , Painting

“Both in Greece and in Provence the poetry attained its highest rhythmic and metrical brilliance at times when the arts of verse and music were most closely knit together, when each thing done by the poet had some definite musical urge or necessity bound up within it.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

"The Tradition", in Poetry, ed. by Harriet Monroe, III, 3 (Dec. 1913), p. 137; reprinted in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (1968), p. 91.

Art , Music , Time

“Love can't be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can't be proved, anymore than anything else important in life can be proved.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 1.16
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

Love , Life

“For the sake of research,
the big picture
and definitive conclusions,
one would have to transcend time,
in which everything scurries and whirls.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"We're Extremely Fortunate"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The End and the Beginning (1993)

Time

“In its current form UML is designed to support a wide variety of different modelling techniques and formalisms. This is evident, for example, in the state machine formalism which allows both Moore and Mealy formalism with hierarchical states including concurrent sub-states and both synchronous and asynchronous calling semantics. The result of this is not only that almost any state modelling style can be supported but also that many combinations of elements have no defined execution semantics. It is now widely recognised within the UML community, however, that considerable benefit can be gained by forming subsets of the UML with well defined execution semantics. Such subsets can form an “executable UML” which would enable the simulation, execution, testing and ultimately translation of UML models into target code. As part of this movement, work is progressing under the auspices of the OMG towards the definition of “profiles” that define such subsets and towards the more detailed definition of the contents of “actions” including a more precise definition of the execution semantics of UML models.”

Stephen J. Mellor (1952) British computer scientist

Mellor and Ian Wilkie (1999). A mapping from Shlaer-Mellor to UML http://www.ooatool.com/docs/SMUML99.pdf. Technical report, Projtech Inc. and Kennedy Carter Limited, 1999.

Communication , Support , Parting

“I find from experience both with government agencies and with private business that there are striking differences. One of those differences is that, in government, there is more continuity and definition in the mandate. The limits of action are often clearly defined. in many cases by Congress. No such situation exists in large private business. Dimock says bureaucracies are related, for example, to size. Yet he points out some bearings on bureaucracies of the inadequacies in our federal civil service system and the conflict of loyalties which arises out of it. This, he states, he succeeded in overcoming. I have had contact with several war agencies made up mainly of businessmen. These men rapidly took on bureaucratic characteristics radically different from their own behavior in private life. The only close parallels I find in the areas of private business to the deadening effects of the present civil service are, on the one hand, what one of my old labor leaders used to call the "sonority" system and, on the other, the very real problems faced by management in dealing with labor which arise immediately out of the prolonged governmental support for organized labor-which is in my judgment bad for labor.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

Source: "Governmental and Business Executives", 1946, p. 176; cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 194-5

Life , Men , War , Behavior

“Deviant (definition): A person who wanders from the One True Path and is caught urinating somewhere in the midst of the unthinkable. A person taking any exit ramp off the freeway of self-righteousness.”

Richard Summerbell (1956) Canadian mycologist

Abnormally Happy: A Gay Dictionary (1985)

Personality

“In what people irritatingly call "iconic" terms, Bin Laden certainly had no rival. The strange, scrofulous quasi-nobility and bogus spirituality of his appearance was appallingly telegenic, and it will be highly interesting to see whether this charisma survives the alternative definition of revolution that has lately transfigured the Muslim world. The most tenaciously lasting impression of all, however, is that of his sheer irrationality. What had the man thought he was doing? Ten years ago, did he expect, let alone desire, to be in a walled compound in dear little Abbottabad?…Ten years ago, I remind you, he had a gigantic influence in one rogue and failed state—Afghanistan—and was exerting an increasing force over its Pakistani neighbor. Taliban and al-Qaida sympathizers were in senior positions in the Pakistani army and nuclear program and had not yet been detected as such. Huge financial subventions flowed his way, often through official channels, from Saudi Arabia and other gulf states…. Then, not only did he run away from Afghanistan, leaving his deluded followers to be killed in very large numbers, but he chose to remain a furtive and shady figure, on whom the odds of a successful covert "hit," or bought-and-paid-for betrayal, were bound to lengthen every day…It seems thinkable that he truly believed his own mad propaganda, often adumbrated on tapes and videos, especially after the American scuttle from Somalia. The West, he maintained, was rotten with corruption and run by cabals of Jews and homosexuals. It had no will to resist. It had become feminized and cowardly. One devastating psychological blow and the rest of the edifice would gradually follow the Twin Towers in a shower of dust. Well, he and his fellow psychopaths did succeed in killing thousands in North America and Western Europe, but in the past few years, their main military triumphs have been against such targets as Afghan schoolgirls, Shiite Muslim civilians, and defenseless synagogues in Tunisia and Turkey. Has there ever been a more contemptible leader from behind, or a commander who authorized more blanket death sentences on bystanders?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2011-05-02
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/05/death_of_a_madman.html
Death of a Madman
Slate
1091-2339
2010s, 2011

Death , People , World , Way

“It is almost as hard to define mathematics as it is to define economics, and one is tempted to fall back on the famous old definition attributed to Jacob Viner, “Economics is what economists do,” and say that mathematics is what mathematicians do. A large part of mathematics deals with the formal relations of quantities or numbers.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Economics As a Science, 1970, p. 97

Mathematics , Parting

“General Marshall was "impatient with a type of nonsense particularly prevalent in the State Department known as 'kicking the problem around.' All of us who have work with General Marshall have reported a recurring outburst of his: 'Don't fight the problem, gentlemen, solve it!' With him the time to be devoted to analysis of a problem, to balancing 'on the one hand' against 'on the other hand,' was definitely limited. The discussion he wanted was about plans of action"”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

Problem , Time , Fight

“Voluntary exchanges are by definition advantageous to their participants. Within this voluntary, mutually beneficial relationship, I give up an item I value less, for something I value more: a fee for the desired product or service. My trading partners, whose valuations are in complementary opposition to mine, reciprocate in kind. Ceteris paribus (all other things being equal), there's nothing wrong with my running a trade deficit with Costco, my hair stylist or my GTI dealer, as I do—just as long as I pay for my purchases. However, the data demonstrate that Americans, in general, are not paying for their purchases.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Trump and Trade," http://praag.org/?p=21936Praag.org, March 12, 2016.
2010s, 2016

“When I was…. in the surroundings of pictures and things of art… I then had a violent passion for them… And I do not repent it, for even now, far from that land, I am often homesick for the land of pictures. Now for more than five years already, I do not know exactly how long, I'm more or less without employment, wandering here and there… But you will ask what is your definite aim? That aim becomes more definite, will stand out slowly and surely, as the rough draft becomes a sketch and the sketch becomes a picture…. my only anxiety is: how can I be of use in the world, cannot I serve some purpose and be of any good, how can I learn more and study profoundly certain subjects?”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In his letter to brother Theo, from Cuesmes, Belgium July 1880; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 133) p. 19
1880s, 1880

World , Art , Study , Learning

“When then is liberalism correctly understood? Liberalism is not an exclusvely political term. It can be applied to a prison reform, to an economic order, to a theology. Within the political framework, the question is not (as in a democracy) “Who should rule?” but “How should rule be exercised?” The reply is “Regardless of who rules—a monarch, an elite, a majority, or a benevolent dictator—governments should be exercised in such a way that each citizen enjoys the greatest amount of personal liberty.” The limit of liberty is obviously the common good. But, admittedly, the common good (material as well as immaterial) is not easily defined, for it rests on value judgments. Its definition is therefore always somewhat arbitrary. Speed limits curtail freedom in the interests of the common good. Is there a watertight case for forty, forty-five, or fifty miles an hour? Certainly not…. Freedom is thus the only postulate of liberalism—of genuine liberalism. If, therefore, democracy is liberal, the life, the whims, the interests of the minority will be just as respected as those of the majority. Yet surely not only a democracy, but a monarchy (absolute or otherwise) or an aristocratic (elitist) regime can be liberal. In fact, the affinity between democracy and liberalism is not at all greater than that between, say, monarchy and liberalism or a mixed government and liberalism. (People under the Austrian monarchy, which was not only symbolic but an effective mixed government, were not less free than those in Canada, to name only one example.)”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 21

Life , People , Way , Exercises

“Taking courage and looking forward from the standpoint of higher ideas born of the multiplication of the arts, they gave up huts and began to build houses with foundations, having brick or stone walls, and roofs of timber and tiles; next, observation and application led them from fluctuating and indefinite conceptions to definite rules of symmetry. Perceiving that nature had been lavish in the bestowal of timber and bountiful in stores of building material, they… embellished them with luxuries.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter I, Sec. 7

Art , Idea , Courage , Nature

“Oneiric values have definitely won out over the others, and I maintain that anyone who still refuses to see, for instance, a horse galloping on a tomato, must be an idiot. A tomato is also a child's balloon - Surrealism, again, having suppressed the word "like."”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=baKRHNX7eo0C&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q&f=false
from: Point du Jour (Break of Day; 1934)
Breton's quote is often misquoted as The man who can't visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.
after 1930

Horse

“No scientist has yet provided an acceptable definition of "mind" or "mental" that reveals the character of "unconscious mental processes," and no physicist a lucid definition of "elementary particles" that shows how they can appear or disappear, and why there are so many.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

Appearance

“From Pythagoras to Boethius, when pure mathematics consisted of arithmetic and geometry while applied mathematics consisted of music and astronomy, mathematics could be characterized as the deductive study of 'such abstractions as quantities and their consequences, namely figures and so forth' (Acquinas ca. 1260). But since the emergence of abstract algebra it has become increasingly difficult to formulate a definition to cover the whole of the rich, complex and expanding domain of mathematics.”

George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician

100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)

Music , Mathematics , Study

“We Communists never conceal our political views. Definitely and beyond all doubt, our future or maximum programme is to carry China forward to socialism and communism. Both the name of our Party and our Marxist world outlook unequivocally point to this supreme ideal of the future, a future of incomparable brightness and splendor.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

World , Communication , Future

“(Sylvia at typewriter) "Superwoman." The definition is 1. A woman who has supernatural powers and uses them to fight evil. 2. A woman who has supernatural powers and uses them to combine a family and a career.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 184

Family , Evil , Fight

“The sixt Definition. A Whole number is either a unitie, or a compounded multitude of unities.”

Simon Stevin (1548–1620) Flemish scientist, mathematician and military engineer

Disme: the Art of Tenths, Or, Decimall Arithmetike (1608)

“This is the president that looked in the soul of Putin [see George W. Bush's quote above], and I could have told him, he was a KGB agent. By definition he doesn't have a soul. I mean, this is a waste of time, right? This is nonsense, but this is the world we're living in right now.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

On the Russian President Vladimir Putin http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/07/hillary_clinton_campaigning_ponders_putins_soul/
Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

World , Quotes , Soul , Time

“And if you need to kiss me. Then you'll most definitely miss me. When I'm gone.”

Ed Harcourt (1977) British musician

She Fell Into My Arms

Kiss

“Many Christians don't want to hear this, but the reality is that there are lots of other explanations for what happened to Jesus that are more probable than the explanation that he was raised from the dead. None of these explanations is very probable, but they are more probable, just looking at the matter historically, than the explanation of the resurrection. … Historians can only establish what probably happened in the past, and by definition, miracles are the least probable of occurrences.”

Bart D. Ehrman book Jesus, Interrupted

Source: Jesus, Interrupted (2009), Ch. 5: 'Liar, Lunatic, or Lord? Finding the Historical Jesus'

Reality , Past , Dead

“I have three dogs, and to see some of the videos or go online and research how animals are treated for fur, the cruelty is worse than torture. I think it’s right that NFL players—with the platform that we have—can [spread] awareness that animals have lives and souls and they go through pain and suffering just as humans do, and they need to be treated accordingly. A lot of people think [that] wearing a fur is expensive, but you don’t know how expensive it is—lives are priceless. … Protecting animals is definitely something that in America we need to step up and do a better job of.”

Maurice Jones-Drew (1985) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back, kick returner

"NFL Star Maurice Jones-Drew Chooses 'Ink, Not Mink'" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0qJ0k8gaxg, video interview with PETA (5 November 2013).

Pain , People , Dogs , Soul

“The older disciplines of Architecture and Manufacturing have accumulated considerable bodies of product knowledge through disciplined management of the "product definition" design artifacts. This has enabled enormous increases in product sophistication and the ability to manage high rates of product change over time. Similarly, disciplined production and management of "Enterprise definition" (i. e. the set of models identified in the Framework for Enterprise Architecture) should provide for an accumulation of a body of Enterprise knowledge to facilitate enormous increases in Enterprise sophistication and accommodation of high rates of Enterprise change over time.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Source: Concepts of the Framework for Enterprise Architecture, 1993, p. 3

Knowledge , Change , Time

“I suspect Hemsworth may have been cast for his appeal to fangirls, rather like Robert Pattinson in "Twilight." He's a little too tall, blonde, blue-eyed and hunky to be super plausible. He can definitely become a star, but it may be in the Peter O'Toole tradition; I can more easily imagine him in a remake of "Lawrence of Arabia" than as a settled spouse in a domestic drama.”

Liam Hemsworth (1990) Australian actor

Roger Ebert on Hemsworth in The Last Song. —
About

Imagination , Star

“Before it can be said, then, that human freedom and the absolute definiteness of God as Supreme Reason are really reconciled, we must have found some way of harmonising the eternity of the human spirit with the creative and regenerative offices of God. The sense of their antagonism is nothing new. Confronted with the race-wide fact of human sin, the elder theology proclaimed this antagonism, and solved it by denying to man any but a temporal being; quite as the common-sense of the everyday Philistine, absorbed in the limitations of the sensory life, proclaims the mere finitude of man, and is stolid to the ideal considerations that suggest immortality and moral freedom, rating them as day-dreams beneath sober notice, because the price of their being real is the attributing to man nothing short of infinity. "We are finite! merely finite!" is the steadfast cry of the old theology and of the plodding common realist alike; and, sad to say, of most of historic philosophy too. And the old theology, with more penetrating consistency than the realistic ordinary man or the ordinary philosophy, went on to complete its vindication of the Divine Sovereignty from all human encroachment by denying the freedom of man altogether.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.330-1

Life , God , Sadness , Dreams

“We have to oppose the widespread view that if the Russians are provoking us, we shouldn't react because that could be perceived as a confirmation of Poland's alleged russophobia. Let's remember that Russia is not only provoking us but also checking how far it can go. Recently it went definitely too far. We must react when we have to do with obvious nonsense, like the Russian foreign ministry's recent statement that Yalta resulted in a strong, free, and democratic Poland.”

Lech Kaczyński (1949–2010) Polish politician, president of Poland

Rzeczpospolita interview (March 2005)

Strong

“I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I think that the Younger Generation is up to something…. I base my apprehension on nothing more definite than the fact that they are always coming in and going out of the house, without any apparent reason.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

"The Children’s Hour" in My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)

Thinking , Housing

“Our country has definitely relinquished the old standard of dealing with other countries by terror and force, and is definitely committed to the new standard of dealing with them through friendship and understanding. This new policy should be constantly kept in mind by the guiding forces of the Army and Navy, by the. Congress and by the country at large. I believe it holds a promise of great benefit to humanity. I shall resist any attempt to resort to the old methods and the old standards. I am especially solicitous that foreign nations should comprehend the candor and sincerity with which we have adopted this position. While we propose to maintain defensive and supplementary police forces by land and sea, and to train them through inspections and maneuvers upon appropriate occasions in order to maintain their efficiency, I wish every other nation to understand that this does not express any unfriendliness or convey any hostile intent. I want the armed forces of America to be considered by all peoples not as enemies but as friends as the contribution which is made by this country for the maintenance of the peace and security of the world.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Friendship , Hostility , People , World

“Cultures and religions do not exist apart from the individual minds that constitute them and the environments that constrain them, any more than biological species and varieties exist independently of the individual organisms that compose them and the environments that conform them. They are not well-bounded systems or definite clusters of beliefs, practices, and artifacts, but more or less regular distributions of causally connected thoughts, behaviors, material products, and environmental objects. To naturalistically understand what "cultures" are is to describe and explain the material causes responsible for reliable differences in these distributions.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 10
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Religion , Behavior , Understanding

“Between 1937 and 1941, Dobzhansky went from being able to allow for the possibility of evolutionary mechanisms other than those he favored to a position in which everything that did not fit his definition of evolution was rejected.
In the midst of his outpouring of anger at and dismissal of Goldschmidt, Dobzhansky neglected to consider the fact that while Goldschmidt's systemic mutations may not have been observed, neither had the mechanisms of speculation that he, or anyone else, for that matter, had proposed. …it was and still is the case that, with the exception of Dobzhansky's claim about a new species of fruit fly, the formation of a new species, by any mechanism, has never been observed.”

Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975) geneticist and evolutionary biologist

Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species (1999)
About

Flying , Anger

“I love animals, always had. It's totally unfair what we do to animals who have no voice, who can't say anything, who can't do anything about it. And since they can't help themselves, someone needs to … I think people definitely need to pay more attention because it's so unfair. … [If you see an animal in need or mistreated] just make sure that you don't forget about the animal, because you wouldn't want anybody to forget about you if you couldn't talk.”

Marlen Esparza (1989) boxer

"Marlen Esparza: Don't Forget About Animals in Need" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t78Ns8vsoVU, interview with PETA (16 January 2013).

Love , People , Thinking , Help

“To say that a poet is justified in employing a disintegrating form in order to express a feeling of disintegration, is merely a sophistical justification for bad poetry, akin to the Whitmanian notion that one must write loose and sprawling poetry to 'express' the loose and sprawling American continent. In fact, all feeling, if one gives oneself (that is, one's form) up to it, is a way of disintegration; poetic form is by definition a means to arrest the disintegration and order the feeling; and in so far as any poetry tends toward the formless, it fails to be expressive of anything.”

Yvor Winters (1900–1968) American poet and literary critic

The Influence of Meter on Poetic Convention, Section V : The Heroic Couplet and its Recent Rivals
Primitivism and Decadence : A Study of American Experimental Poetry (1937)

Way , Feeling

“The use of the word "administration," is unfortunately somewhat misleading, for the word when accompanied by the definite article is also used to indicate… popularly the most important executive or administrative authorities.”

Frank Johnson Goodnow (1859–1939) American historian

Frank Johnson Goodnow, cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 44

“The briefest definition of the Islamic order defines it as a unity of religion and law, upbringing and power, ideal and interest, the spiritual community and the state, willingness and force… An Islamic society without an Islamic authority is incomplete and without power; Islamic government without Islamic society is either utopia or violence. Generally speaking, a Muslim does not exist as a sole individual. If he wishes to live and survive as a Muslim, he must create an environment, a community, a system.”

Alija Izetbegović (1925–2003) Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Source: The Islamic Declaration (1970), p. 26.

Religion , Law , Communication

“and they [the boomers] definitely pranked us fiscally with debt that [we] will never be able to pay off.”

Lauren Southern (1995) Canadian libertarian commentator

0:25-30
2017 New Year's Resolutions for Millennials

“The name of happiness is but a wider term
for the unalloy'd conditions of the Pleasur of Life,
attendant on all function, and not to be deny'd
to th' soul, unless forsooth in our thought of nature
spiritual is by definition unnatural.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Book IV, lines 533-537.
The Testament of Beauty (1929-1930)

Life , Pleasure , Soul , Nature

“I've always grown up with animals and I just felt like, that, animals were always family to me. And so, I am a complete lover of animals, and anything I can do to support them, that’s really my goal and job. … I always call my dogs "kids" and so anytime a child can associate that type of love of an animal as they would with another human being, I definitely think that's going to kind of help our culture as we are going along. Of course in the Bible, God gave man dominion over animals … I definitely believe that dominion is not taking it and beating them but just showing them the way. Showing them that you love them, that you are concerned about them, you want to watch them grow up to be the best animals that they could possibly be.”

DeWayne Woods (1975) American gospel musician

"DeWayne Woods: Treat Animals as Family Members" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9zQ0di3vpc, interview on PETA's YouTube channel (January 7, 2013).

Love , God , Family , Dogs

“Roger: It does a little bit of both I think it depends on the band. On a band that is enormously huge like Metallica it definitely hurts cause people are just going to download their stuff-period. But a smaller band maybe that hasn’t sold anything but has been able to have some good shows and get some fans out because of their MySpace or whatever you know what I mean. Using the Internet as a tool to promote the band is awesome. My sisters’ band doesn’t have a CD or whatever but they constantly pull 100 kids at their shows because they promote heavily on the internet and they stay in touch with their fans that way so it can be either or. For Less Than Jake we’re right in the middle. We definitely get a lot of paths to talk about the band, and interviews, and stuff for sale, and you know what I mean MySpace’s and Facebook’s all that kind of stuff there’s a presence there that definitely helps the band. But at the same time I know we’re one of the bands that is a victim of a lot of downloading so there you go.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

People , Way , Thinking , Sister

“As we turn over the pages of nineteenth century literature, we are constantly confronted with the question of alienation. Baudelaire, Marx, Kierkegaard, Chateaubriand, Cardinal Newman — it does not matter whether the voice comes from the Left or the Right; all are agreed in their rejection of the values of the prevailing ethic. Yet we never get a clear definition of alienation: what is man alienated from, and why? Perhaps it is precisely the democratic society, the growing affluence and education, that have revealed the natural state of man — much as the development of medicine has enabled greater accuracy of diagnosis, with the resultant tremendous increase in the record of certain diseases. Perhaps the discovery of human self-alienation was simply a statistical refinement made possible by the spread of the privileges of culture to the middle classes.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Gustave Flaubert: A Sentimental Education (p. 187)
Classics Revisited (1968)

Education , Disease , Literature , Question

“My definition of a scientist is that you can complete the following sentence: ‘he or she has shown that…”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-richard-dawkins-is-no-scientist-the-survival-of-the-least-selfish-and-what-ants-can-tell-us-about-humans-eo-wilson-on-his-new-book-the-meaning-of-human-existence-9849956.html

“Forming mind-masses amalgamate, combine or compound themselves in definite degree, partly with each other, partly with older mind-masses. The manner and strength of these combinations depend on conditions which are but imperfectly recognised by Herbart… They depend chiefly upon the inner relationship of the mind-masses.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Dependency

“I feel most spiritual when I'm out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it's all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something I'm listening to God.”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

"Pete Seeger's Session" http://www.beliefnet.com/entertainment/music/2006/08/pete-seegers-session?p=2, a Beliefnet interview (2006)

God , Feeling , Star , Nature

“If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“A theorem is a proposition which is a strict logical consequence of certain definitions and other propositions”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport. " Various meanings of “theory”." http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~fczagare/PSC%20504/Rapoport%20(1958).pdf American Political Science Review 52.04 (1958): 972-988.
1950s

“I think that when you make a record, an album, it has to be a discovery for the person listening to it, so you don't want to pat everything out and say "this was that, this is definite, that's how it happened and that's what you should feel and that's what you should like or dislike."”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

It's personal discovery."
From an interview with Russell Brand in 2009
In interviews etc., About pop culture

Feeling , Thinking , Personality

“By definition, a pair of inherently unmeasurable, non-stationary systems, are coupled to produce an inherently measurable stationary system.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: An Approach to Cybernetics (1961), p. 98.

“I'll say this about nuclear weapons. You know I'm not sitting on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I'm not in on the planning. I'll take it at face value that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff successfully eliminated nuclear weapons in the first phase of the operation.But keep in mind this. That the Bush Administration has built a new generation of nuclear weapons that we call 'usable nukes.' And they have a nuclear posture now, which permits the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear environment, if the Commander in Chief deems U. S. forces to be in significant risk.If we start bombing Iran, I'm telling you right now, it's not going to work. We're not going to achieve decapitation, regime change, all that. What will happen is the Iranians will respond, and we will feel the pain instantaneously, which will prompt the Bush administration to phase two, which will have to be boots on the ground. And we will put boots on the ground, we will surge a couple of divisions in, probably through Azerbaijan, down the Caspian Sea coast, in an effort to push the regime over. And when they don't push over, we now have 40,000 troops trapped. We have now reached the definition of significant numbers of U. S. troops in harm's way, and there is no reserve to pull them out! There's no more cavalry to come riding to the rescue. And at that point in time, my concern is that we will use nuclear weapons to break the backbone of Iranian resistance, and it may not work.But what it will do is this: it will unleash the nuclear genie. And so for all those Americans out there tonight who say, 'You know what - taking on Iran is a good thing.' I just told you if we take on Iran, we're gonna use nuclear weapons. And if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain't going back in the bottle, until an American city is taken out by an Islamic weapon in retaliation. So, tell me, you want to go to war with Iran. Pick your city. Pick your city. Tell me which one you want gone. Seattle? L. A.? Boston? New York? Miami. Pick one. Cause at least one's going. And that's something we should all think about before we march down this path of insanity that George Bush has us headed on.</p”

Scott Ritter (1961) American weapons inspector and writer

October 16, 2006
2006

Pain , War , Way , Feeling

“[On the need for ultra high definition television] The problem with television isn't the number of horizontal scanning lines. It's the lines of dialogue spoken by the actors.”

Bran Ferren (1953) American technologist

Museums for the New Millennium: Proceedings, museumstudies.si.edu, 2017-03-12 http://museumstudies.si.edu/millennium/proceed8.htm,

Problem

“The Economic definition of Wealth is subtle and diflicult to appreciate, but it is absolutely essential to our study to get it clear at the outset and keep it firmly in mind.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Source: Economics for Helen (1924), Ch. 1 : What is Wealth?

Study , Wealth

“Closet (definition): Basement suite of a heterosexual outhouse.”

Richard Summerbell (1956) Canadian mycologist

Abnormally Happy: A Gay Dictionary (1985)

“Rick and Morty is definitely the most freeing, most fun thing I’ve ever worked on. It’s had the biggest impact. I love everything I make—and hate it, I guess—but I have a very special relationship with Rick and Morty, and getting a 70-episode pickup means that I can actually really focus on it, and loving it won’t be taking away from anything else. I can let Rick and Morty take away from everything.”

Dan Harmon (1973) American writer and performer

May 2018 interview with GQ https://www.gq.com/story/rick-and-morty-renewed-for-season-4-dan-harmon-interview

Love , Hate

“There is a difference between the ordinary person who may discuss these things occasionally over a pint of beer at the local pub, or worry about them for a while before dropping off to sleep, and the person who makes a serious lifelong commitment to struggling with them and turns that commitment into a part of his or her very self-definition. For one cannot say, I’ve finished theology; now I’ll move on to another subject. There is a sense in which one might say something similar of Akkadian grammar or the family tree of the Hapsburg dynasty, but one cannot reasonably assert it of exploration into God’s revelation, which is, by definition infinite in its implications for human understanding. To be a theological student in the full sense of those words cannot be a temporary state or a preamble to something else, such as the ministerial priesthood or an all-round education. Rather, it is a solemn engagement to developing over a lifetime the gift of Christian wonder or curiosity, which is the specifically theological mode of faith. As theologians, then, we commit ourselves to the lifelong study and reflection which the satisfaction of such curiosity will need. Our faith is from now on, in St. Anselm’s words, fides quaerens intellectum, “a faith that quests for understanding.””

Aidan Nichols (1948) British theologian

The Shape of Catholic Theology (1991), pp. 18-19.

God , Education , Family , Faith

“I've had all that I can take and exploding seems like a definite possibility to me.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Make Yourself (1999)

“Pleasers … make up what Earl Shorris has called “the oppressed middle,” the middle-managers who enjoy “the comforts of fearful people” and pay by submitting to their superiors’ definitions of happiness and success.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 82

People , Fear , Success , Happiness

“Our most important aim is to develop definite personalities in our cartoon characters. We don't want them to be just shadows, for merely as moving figures they provoke no emotional response from the public. We invest them with life a caricature of life.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

Walt Disney interview, New York Times, (March 1938).

Life , Personality

“I believe that we probably have lost the culture war. That doesn't mean the war is not going to continue, and that it isn't going to be fought on other fronts. But in terms of society in general, we have lost. This is why, even when we win in politics, our victories fail to translate into the kind of policies we believe are important.Therefore, what seems to me a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture. I would point out to you that the word "holy" means "set apart," and that it is not against our tradition to be, in fact, "set apart." You can look in the Old Testament, you can look at Christian history. You will see that there were times when those who had our beliefs were definitely in the minority and it was a band of hardy monks who preserved the culture while the surrounding society disintegrated.What I mean by separation is, for example, what the homeschoolers have done. Faced with public school systems that no longer educate but instead "condition" students with the attitudes demanded by Political Correctness, they have seceded. They have separated themselves from public schools and have created new institutions, new schools, in their homes.”

Paul Weyrich (1942–2008) American political activist

Letter to Amy Ridenour, National Center for Public Policy Research http://www.nationalcenter.org/Weyrich299.html (1999-02-16)

War , Education , School , Way

“"Psychiatry" and "psychiatrist" are easily redefined to mean "an anti-social enemy of the people". This takes the kill crazy psychiatrist off the preferred list of professions … The redefinition of words is done by associating different emotions and symbols with the word than were intended… Scientologists are redefining "doctor", "Psychiatry" and "psychology" to mean "undesirable antisocial elements"… The way to redefine a word is to get the new definition repeated as often as possible. Thus it is necessary to redefine medicine, psychiatry and psychology downward and define Dianetics and Scientology upwards. This, so far as words are concerned, is the public opinion battle for belief in your definitions, and not those of the opposition. A consistent, repeated effort is the key to any success with this technique of propaganda.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

"Propaganda by Redefinition of Words" (5 October 1971).
Scientology Policy Letters

People , Way , Effort , Success

“Some argue that the Bible doesn’t really say some of the things we can prove that it does, while others are convinced that it clearly does say things that it doesn’t really even hint at anywhere. For example, the idea that there was no death before “the fall”. The Bible doesn’t say that. In fact, it says there was death before the fall, because Adam and Eve had to ingest and digest living cells in order to survive, the very definition of what it means to be an animal. The only way around that was to eat of the fruit of the tree of eternal life, which directly contradicts the creationist’s interpretation, because it wouldn’t need to be there if they already had eternal life. It is an obvious metaphor representing a choice, perhaps between innocence and responsibility. That too is an interpretation. But it was obviously not an actual deciduous plant!”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"3rd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnj7PlqmJ5o, Youtube (December 10, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Life , Death , Way , Idea

“It is possible not to think about something for a long time, even something unpleasant that happened to you. But what's been claimed in these repressed-memory cases is something, by definition, that's too extreme to be explained by ordinary forgetting and remembering. They're saying that in order to go on in life, you had to wall off this memory, because it would be too painful to live with. Then finally you go into therapy and crack through the repression barrier and out comes this pristine memory. But there really is no credible scientific support for that notion.”

Elizabeth Loftus (1944) American cognitive psychologist

I could have sworn...Why you can’t trust your memory https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929310-400-i-could-have-sworn-why-you-cant-trust-your-memory/ (8/21/2013)

Life , Pain , Support , Thinking

“I find it very significant that no religious traditions, Islam included, is ever in a position, I think almost by definition, to put cruelty first in the order of its priorities of the terrible things that human beings can do. That is perfectly illustrated in the story of Abraham's sacrifice with his son. Because, of course, what the story's all about is faith, the importance, and the primacy of faith. … What is the essence of faith in the story is Abraham's willingness (a) not to question God about his command to sacrifice his son, and (b) to proceed slowly, deliberately, over a period of time -- three days, I think it was -- [and] march up the mountain, prepare the sacrifice, unquestioning, resolute. [It was] the perfect, as Kierkegaard put it, "night of faith" model, exemplar of faith. And [Abraham] is, in the Muslim tradition exactly that -- an exemplar of faith. That is the importance of Abraham to Muslims. … Had he faltered, his faith would have been less, a degree or so less. He didn't falter. God immediately stops it at the absolute last moment and, of course, the act is ended. But what the story is all about is how faith in God comes first, before anything else, and then follow various virtues, of which harm to other human beings surely has to be below faith. It seemed to me that that is something that the hijackers certainly took to heart.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

God , Faith , Mountain , Question

“I think the issues happen to be so important for the future of Canada. (spoken over Brian Mulroney's objections) I happen to believe that you've sold us out…once any country yields its economic levers, once a country yields its investments, once a country yields its energy, once a country yields its agriculture, once a country opens itself to a subsidy war with the United States on terms of definition, then the political ability of this country to sustain the influence of the United States, to remain as an independent nation- that is lost forever!”

John Turner (1929) 17th Prime Minister of Canada

Attacking the Free Trade agreement in the 1988 Federal Election debate, October 25, 1988.
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/mulroney-battles-turner-on-free-trade-in-1988

War , Country , Thinking , Future

“Furthermore, we are instructed, when we do come across instances of temple destruction, as in the case of Aurangzeb, we have to be circumspect in inferring what has happened and why…. the early monuments – like the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi – had to be built in ‘great haste’, we are instructed…Proclamation of political power, alone! And what about the religion which insists that religious faith is all, that the political cannot be separated from the religious? And the name: the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, the Might of Islam mosque? Of course, that must be taken to be mere genuflection! And notice: ‘available materials were assembled and incorporated’, they ‘clearly came from Hindu sources’ – may be the materials were just lying about; may be the temples had crumbled on their own earlier; may be the Hindus voluntarily broke their temples and donated the materials? No? After all, there is no proof they didn’t! And so, the word ‘plundered’ is repeatedly put within quotation marks!
In fact, there is more. The use of such materials – from Hindu temples – for constructing Islamic mosques is part of ‘a process of architectural definition and accommodation by local workmen essential to the further development of a South Asian architecture for Islamic use’. The primary responsibility thus becomes that of those ‘local workmen’ and their ‘accommodation’. Hence, features in the Qutb complex come to ‘demonstrate a creative response by architects and carvers to a new programme’. A mosque that has clearly used materials, including pillars, from Hindu temples, in which undeniably ‘in the fabric of the central dome, a lintel carved with Hindu deities has been turned around so that its images face into the rubble wall’ comes ‘not to fix the rule’. ‘Rather, it stands in contrast to the rapid exploration of collaborative and creative possibilities – architectural, decorative, and synthetic – found in less fortified contexts.’ Conclusions to the contrary have been ‘misevaluations’. We are making the error of ‘seeing salvaged pieces’ – what a good word that, ‘salvaged ’: the pieces were not obtained by breaking down temples; they were lying as rubble and would inevitably have disintegrated with the passage of time; instead they were ‘salvaged ’, and given the honour of becoming part of new, pious buildings – ‘seeing salvaged pieces where healthy collaborative creativity was producing new forms’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Faith , Religion , Error , Lying

“Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within their context – as art – they provide no information whatsoever about any matter of fact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention, that is, he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

Art after Philosophy, 1969

Art

“I don’t think there is a secret. We definitely didn’t find it. We discovered that it’s work. But we already knew that. It was very fun to actually walk through our time together and see the timeline presented. When we started the process, we didn’t really think we had a book. But in that sense, it was fun to actually have someone to walk us through so that we didn’t have to try to put a framework to it since we didn’t know what the framework was. But from talking to [co-author Hilary Beard] together and individually, she was able to say, “This is actually a book.” We didn’t start out to write a 300-page book. We started out with something much simpler and it morphed into that. It was fun to be able to talk about our journey together, because that’s what it is, it is a journey.”

Courtney B. Vance (1960) American actor

Courtney B. Vance on Battling The Mummy and the Secret to a Lasting Hollywood Marriage https://parade.com/575448/walterscott/courtney-b-vance-on-battling-the-mummy-and-the-secret-to-a-lasting-hollywood-marriage/ (June 2, 2017)

Secret , Books , Thinking , Sense

“I make these statements with a definite purpose in mind. So much nonsense has been talked along these lines and so many claims made by those who have not the experience and the mental and spiritual orientation required, that true disciples are ashamed to mention their work and position. I want to make it easier for such disciples in the future, and to "debunk" the nonsense put out by many esoteric (so-called) schools of thought.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter I, Part 2

School , Future

“It is known that the mathematics prescribed for the high school [Gymnasien] is essentially Euclidean, while it is modern mathematics, the theory of functions and the infinitesimal calculus, which has secured for us an insight into the mechanism and laws of nature. Euclidean mathematics is indeed, a prerequisite for the theory of functions, but just as one, though he has learned the inflections of Latin nouns and verbs, will not thereby be enabled to read a Latin author much less to appreciate the beauties of a Horace, so Euclidean mathematics, that is the mathematics of the high school, is unable to unlock nature and her laws. Euclidean mathematics assumes the completeness and invariability of mathematical forms; these forms it describes with appropriate accuracy and enumerates their inherent and related properties with perfect clearness, order, and completeness, that is, Euclidean mathematics operates on forms after the manner that anatomy operates on the dead body and its members.
On the other hand, the mathematics of variable magnitudes—function theory or analysis—considers mathematical forms in their genesis. By writing the equation of the parabola, we express its law of generation, the law according to which the variable point moves. The path, produced before the eyes of the 113 student by a point moving in accordance to this law, is the parabola.
If, then, Euclidean mathematics treats space and number forms after the manner in which anatomy treats the dead body, modern mathematics deals, as it were, with the living body, with growing and changing forms, and thus furnishes an insight, not only into nature as she is and appears, but also into nature as she generates and creates,—reveals her transition steps and in so doing creates a mind for and understanding of the laws of becoming. Thus modern mathematics bears the same relation to Euclidean mathematics that physiology or biology … bears to anatomy. But it is exactly in this respect that our view of nature is so far above that of the ancients; that we no longer look on nature as a quiescent complete whole, which compels admiration by its sublimity and wealth of forms, but that we conceive of her as a vigorous growing organism, unfolding according to definite, as delicate as far-reaching, laws; that we are able to lay hold of the permanent amidst the transitory, of law amidst fleeting phenomena, and to be able to give these their simplest and truest expression through the mathematical formulas”

Christian Heinrich von Dillmann (1829–1899) German educationist

Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 37.

School , Law , Beauty , Mathematics

“Simply translating the act of the scientist is the first job of any science writer. Then, in my more grandiose moments, the other big job of a science writer is to see connections, to see the forest composed by all these trees. The act of being a scientist, by definition, the act of being a modern scientist requires you to really focus. You have to drill down. You have to spend years studying one brick, one synaptic protein, one kind of thing that turns on the amygdala, one very particular question.”

Jonah Lehrer (1981) American science writer

Chimeras of Experience: A Conversation with Jonah Lehrer (2009)

Question , Tree , Study , Science

“The external embodiment of an act is composed of many parts, and may be regarded as capable of being divided into an infinite number of particulars. An act may be looked on as in the first instance coming into contact with only one of these particulars. But the truth of the particular is the universal. A definite act is not confined in its content to one isolated point of the varied external world, but is universal, including these varied relations within itself. The purpose, which is the product of thought and embraces not the particular only but also the universal side, is intention.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Elements of the Philosophy of Right

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of Right translated by SW Dyde Queen’s University Canada 1896 p. 114-115
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820/1821)

Truth , World , Universe , Parting

Quotes about definition page 5

Quotes about definition
page 5